City

A city is a large and permanent human settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town in general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.

Cities generally have complex systems for sanitation, utilities, land usage, housing, and transportation. The concentration of development greatly facilitates interaction between people and businesses, benefiting both parties in the process, but it also presents challenges to managing urban growth.

A big city or metropolis usually has associated suburbs and exurbs. Such cities are usually associated with metropolitan areas and urban areas, creating numerous business commuters traveling to urban centers for employment. Once a city expands far enough to reach another city, this region can be deemed a conurbation or megalopolis. In terms of population, the largest city proper is Shanghai, while the fastest-growing is Dubai.

Origins

There is not enough evidence to assert what conditions gave rise to the first cities. Some theorists have speculated on what they consider suitable pre-conditions and basic mechanisms that might have been important driving forces.

City government in Washington (state)

There are 281 municipalities in the U.S. state of Washington. State law determines the various powers its municipalities have.

City classes

Legally, a city in Washington can be described primarily by its class. There are five classes of cities in Washington:

First class cities are cities with a population over 10,000 at the time of reorganization and operating under a home rule charter. They are permitted to perform any function specifically granted them by Title 35 RCW (Revised Code of Washington). Among them are Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, Vancouver, and Yakima.

Second class cities are cities with a population over 1,500 at the time of reorganization and operating without a home rule charter. Like first class cities, they are permitted to perform any function specifically granted them by Title 35 RCW. Among them are Port Orchard, Wapato, and Colville.

Towns are municipalities with a population of under 1,500 at the time of reorganization. Towns are not authorized to operate under a charter. Like the previously listed cities, they are permitted to perform any function specifically granted them by Title 35 RCW. Among them are Steilacoom, Friday Harbor, Eatonville, and Waterville. In 1994, the legislature made 1,500 the minimum population required to incorporate.

Administrative divisions of Texas

Texas has a total of 254 counties, many cities, and numerous special districts, the most common of which is the independent school district.

County

Texas has a total of 254 counties, by far the largest number of counties of any state.

Each county is run by a five-member Commissioners' Court consisting of four commissioners elected from single-member districts (called commissioner precincts) and a county judge elected at-large. The county judge does not have authority to veto a decision of the commissioners court; the judge votes along with the commissioners (being the tie-breaker in close calls). In smaller counties, the county judge actually does perform judicial duties, but in larger counties the judge's role is limited to serving on the commissioners court and certifying elections. Certain officials, such as the sheriff and tax collector, are elected separately by the voters, but the commissioners court determines their office budgets, and sets overall county policy. All county elections are partisan, and commissioner precincts are redistricted after each ten year Census both to equalize the voting power in each and in consideration of the political party preferences of the voters in each.

Oblique (film)

Oblique (2008) is a film by the Norwegian artist Knut Åsdam (1968).

Synopsis

The 13 minute film Oblique (2008) is an articulation of identity in transition. The entire film was shot on a train moving through a continuous mass built from cities and their adjoining regions. The characters are traveling in the suspended generic space of the train through regions composite of old and new economies and old and new social realities: Newly built outer areæ around the cities, construction sites, institutional and office buildings, transitory places, between growth and collapse, marked by quasi-contradictory processes of economic progress and development of slums. On the train coach itself, a targeted but sometimes absurd narrative plays itself out as a linguistic reaction to the time and place.

Urban environments, and their heterotopic sites, are locations for Knut Åsdam's investigations into social design, patterns of behavior and modes of subjectivity, with a particular focus on spatial identity's disorder and pathologies. Åsdam perceives a city as a machine of desire, its geography as a system of desire and its architecture as a generator of desiring practices. Usage and perception of public urban spaces, their structures of political power and authority occupy a central place in the artist's studies of identities.

Phoenix (1792)

Phoenix was a ship involved in the maritime fur trade of the Pacific during the late 18th century.

Her captain was Hugh Moore, and her home port was Bombay. She is known to have visited the Pacific Northwest in 1792, and to have wintered in the Columbia River in 1794. Phoenix visited a prominent Haida village on Langara Island in 1792. As historian F. Howay recounted:

Sailing south to Alta California during March 1795, Phoenix traded for sea otter furs in Santa Barbara before visiting the Kingdom of Hawaii and later the Qing port of Guangzhou.William Marsden later employed the ship to collect several nutmeg and cloves for agricultural efforts in Sumatra. Phoenix delivered the cargo in July 1798 "a complete success."

Phoenix was the namesake of the Russian-American Company brig Phoenix, the first vessel built in Russian America by Alexandr Baranov.

References

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Phoenix (1809 ship)

Phoenix was a vessel launched in France in 1809. After the British captured her she was sold and her new owners employed her as whaler. She visited the Galapagos islands in July 1823. In 1824, while under the command of John Palmer, she discovered Phoenix Island, later known as Rawaki Island, as well as Kanton Island.

Privateer

Phénix was built in Bordeaux in 1809. In 1810 she was under the command of Jacques François Perroud, a notable French captain with a long history of privateering. Under Perroud's command, Phénix made a number of captures.

On 25 January 1810 the privateer Phoenix, of 20 guns and 110 men, belonging to Bordeaux, captured the Donna Maria, Lunes, master, which had been sailing from Boston to Lisbon. However, on 9 February HMS Conflict recaptured Donna Maria on 9 February; she arrived at Plymouth on 24 February.

On 13 March, the English ship Chatham, which had sailed from Georgia with a cargo of rice and cotton, arrived at Paimbœuf. Chatham was a prize to the Phoenix, of Bordeaux.

Phoenix (1929 ship)

The Phoenix is a ship built by Hjorne & Jakobsen at Frederikshavn, Denmark in 1929, originally as an Evangelical Mission Schooner.

Missionary and cargo ship

Twenty years later she retired from missionary work and carried cargo until her engine room was damaged by fire. In 1974 she was bought by new owners who converted her into a Brigantine before being purchased by Square Sail in 1988. A first aid over-haul enabled her to sail back to the UK where she underwent a complete refit.

Appearances in films

Caravel Santa Maria

During 1991 she was converted to the 15th century Caravel Santa Maria for Ridley Scott's film 1492: Conquest of Paradise. The ship was known as Santa Maria until, in 1996, due to increasing demand for period square-riggers, she was converted into a 2 masted Brig and reverted to her original name Phoenix of Dell Quay.

Hornblower Series 3

Phoenix of Dell Quay was used as the ship Retribution in the Hornblower Series 3.

Film credits

Film credits include: